RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)


  • Will Affordability Bankrupt President Trump?

    Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
    by James Bovard

    “Trump constantly blusters as if he deserves the Nobel Prize for Economic Triumphs, just like he supposedly deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. In a January speech in Iowa, he doubled down on his triumphs by referring to himself in the third person: ‘Just after one year of President Trump, our economy is booming …. Incomes are rising. Investment is soaring. Inflation has been defeated.’ Unfortunately, Trump’s record on the economy is as shaky as his claims that he ended eight wars. The core wholesale inflation rate rose in January at an annual rate of 9 percent. ‘Howl louder’ has been the president’s response. Beginning late last year, the affordability issue made Trump schizophrenic.” (05/18/26)

    https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/will-affordability-bankrupt-president-trump/

  • The dangerous allure of a post-Netanyahu Israel

    Source: Responsible Statecraft
    by Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man

    “Israel is officially entering election season, and with it comes the perennial and inescapable excitement among some progressives in the United States who are eager to see Israeli voters send Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu packing. That excitement, however, is an illusion. It is built on a belief, long clung to by American supporters of Israel, that Israel without Netanyahu would somehow become a liberal democracy that aligns more with their own values. That illusion is based on a false view of Israeli policy in the decades before Netanyahu’s reign.” (05/18/26)

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/bennett-israel/

  • What do “laws” prove?

    Source: Kent’s “Hooligan Libertarian” Blog
    by Kent McManigal

    “In a discussion about the effect of self-driving cars on cops and their DWI grift, someone said, ‘Self driving cars are a fantasy. They do not have the ability. They can assist but cannot drive themselves.’ Now, this is objectively not true. Someone else pointed out. ‘I’ve seen them driving around downtown, sans human driver.’ The Luddite’s response. ‘They are not reliable. Several have ran over pedestrians and they have been the cause of accidents.’ I pointed out, ‘Humans are even less reliable, unfortunately.’ So, he responded, ‘If that is true then why is it required for a person to be at the wheel and paying attention while the vehicle is driving itself?’ … That ‘laws’ require something dumb isn’t an argument. It proves nothing.” (05/18/26)

    https://kentmcmanigal.blogspot.com/2026/05/what-do-laws-prove.html

  • Stop fearing a strong Russia — start fearing a dying Russia

    Source: The Hill
    by Emzari Gelashvili

    “Russia entered the war at maximum sustainable capacity without general mobilization. After years of attrition, it has burned through most of its Soviet-era equipment stocks. Given Russia’s weakened state, a conventional confrontation with NATO is not only unlikely now, but it has become almost impossible — prohibitively expensive and demographically unsustainable. The real strategic risk is not a confident Russia launching a conventional assault on the Baltics. It is the behavior of a cornered, nuclear-armed state that perceives itself in terminal decline. A leadership facing military failure and domestic crisis may calculate that tactical nuclear signaling or hybrid escalation offers its best chance to reset the board.” (05/18/26)

    https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5880263-russia-decline-military-economy-2026/

  • Taxes and Government Fees Make Up 25 Percent of Car Rental Fees

    Source: Reason
    by JD Tuccille

    “With gasoline averaging about $4.50 per gallon — over six bucks if you’re unlucky enough to live in California — President Donald Trump proposes a gas tax holiday to give American consumers a bit of relief. A reprieve from taxes is always welcome, but the real bite isn’t the federal 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 cents on each gallon of diesel fuel. States charge far more, and that’s especially true if you rent a car, with gas taxes the least of the problem. In some places, more than half the tab for car rentals comes from taxes and government-mandated fees.” (05/18/26)

    https://reason.com/2026/05/18/taxes-and-government-fees-make-up-25-percent-of-car-rental-fees/

  • Trump Reigniting Iran War Proves It Was Failure From the Start

    Source: Common Dreams
    by Trita Parsi

    “The Middle East is once again teetering on the brink as Trump appears poised to reignite war with Iran. Press reports indicate he will convene military advisers on Tuesday, though my understanding is that both the meeting and the decision are likely to come sooner. Over the past several hours, Trump has flooded Truth Social with a barrage of incendiary threats. While some of this may be theatrical brinkmanship designed to force Tehran into submission, sources in the Iranian capital tell me they expect the United States to resume hostilities within the next 48 hours. We should first recognize that restarting the war amounts to an admission that Trump’s previous escalatory gambit — the blockade of the blockade — has failed.” (05/18/26)

    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-restarting-iran-war

  • Kevin Warsh’s Impossible Mission

    Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
    by Ron Paul

    “President Trump’s ‘solution’ to the economic problems facing many Americans is lower interest rates. Jerome Powell, who Warsh is succeeding as Fed chair, has refused to lower rates to the level desired by President Trump. This is a big part of why the president has said he chose not to reappoint Powell. Concerns that Warsh would allow President Trump to dictate monetary policy help explain why only one Democratic Senator voted for Warsh’s confirmation. Lowering rates may slightly reduce credit card and other interest rates paid by consumers. However, it will further erode the dollar’s value, thus further reducing Americans’ real incomes and causing them to go further into debt.” (05/18/26)

    http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/kevin-warshs-impossible-mission

  • Medicine by Captivity: The Rise of the Hostage Physician

    Source: Brownstone Institute
    by Joseph Varon

    “I have now spent four decades practicing medicine. … Most physicians did. That is the part many people outside medicine still do not fully understand. Doctors do not sacrifice years of their lives, miss holidays, destroy their sleep schedules, and carry this kind of emotional burden because they dream about maximizing throughput metrics or documentation compliance. We entered medicine because we wanted to help people. It sounds simple saying that now, maybe even naïve, but it is true. Somewhere along the line medicine changed. Hospitals changed. The language changed first because that is always how these transformations begin. Patients slowly became ‘throughput issues.’ Beds became ‘capacity management.’ Discharges became ‘flow optimization.’ … Everything slowly started sounding less human and more operational. And eventually, hospitals stopped feeling like places centered around caring for human beings and started feeling like giant processing centers where movement itself became the priority.” (05/18/26)

    https://brownstone.org/articles/medicine-by-captivity-the-rise-of-the-hostage-physician/

  • How Marco Rubio morphed his way into Trump’s inner circle

    Source: Christian Science Monitor
    by Linda Feldmann

    “As a United States senator from Florida, Marco Rubio was a high-profile ‘neocon’ – a hawk on China and Russia, a strong supporter of Taiwan, Ukraine, and NATO, and an advocate for free trade and human rights. Today, not so much – at least on those issues. As both secretary of State and acting national security adviser, Secretary Rubio is fully on board with President Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy: more ‘Art of the Deal’ use of American leverage, including tariffs, less hard-line absolutism with other major powers. Mr. Rubio’s evolution shouldn’t come as a shock. After all, he is no longer his own boss; he works for President Trump – in two key capacities, the first to hold both titles since Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.” (05/18/26)

    https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2026/0518/rubio-trump-foreign-policy

  • The Hungry Boar

    Source: Underthrow
    by Max Borders

    “A Parable of Power and Subversive Innovation.” (05/18/26)

    https://underthrow.substack.com/p/the-hungry-boar

  • Dems’ idiotic rhetoric on courts reveals what they’re really after

    Source: New York Post
    by David Harsanyi

    “The contemporary leftist [sic] is a consequentialist with no limiting principles. After the Virginia Supreme Court stopped the Democrats’ unconstitutional gerrymandering scheme, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now the favorite Democratic Party presidential prospect 2028 in a number of polls, claimed that the court ‘didn’t overturn a map’ but ‘overturned an election.’ ‘The power of the American people, that should be the ultimate check on all three branches,’ she declared. In any other age, vocalizing illiterate nonsense about our system of governance might be an embarrassing career-ending flub. Today, it’s the norm among progressives.” (05/18/26)

    https://nypost.com/2026/05/18/opinion/dems-idiotic-rhetoric-on-courts-reveals-what-theyre-really-after/

  • Economics is Intuitive: Rejoinder to Craig

    Source: Bet On It
    by Bryan Caplan

    “Basic economics makes psychologically normal humans angry and disgusted. Usually mildly, but the uglier the economic lesson, the more extreme the anger and disgust become. … They don’t think very carefully, but they still have strong opinions against, say, letting developers buy up townhomes in San Francisco to replace them with skyscrapers. Which is very weird. Why would anyone have strong opinions about issues they haven’t thought about very carefully? Because they’re relying on emotion instead!” (05/18/26)

    https://www.betonit.ai/p/economics-is-intuitive-rejoinder

  • Trump’s Cabinet dramatically changed American foreign policy while the president made noise – a scholar of presidential rhetoric explains

    Source: The Conversation
    by Kevin Maloney

    “The president’s rhetorical style, heard most recently on his mid-May trip to China, is explained by political allies as part of Trump’s strategic approach and criticized by his opponents as the dangerous musings of an unstable leader. In either case – whether it’s Trump’s defenders or detractors – it is increasingly difficult to ascertain whether the language of the president signals actual policy positions from the White House. If the words of the American president no longer function as reliable indicators of U.S. foreign policy, where can the public, U.S. allies and America’s adversaries look to better understand the administration’s geopolitical priorities? One answer may be found by examining the words of key Cabinet members.” (05/18/26)

    https://theconversation.com/trumps-cabinet-dramatically-changed-american-foreign-policy-while-the-president-made-noise-a-scholar-of-presidential-rhetoric-explains-281307

  • Decades of Bad Energy Policy Left Oil Markets Vulnerable to Iran Shock

    Source: The Daily Economy
    by Rebak Attila

    “Current energy prices reflect the delayed costs of regulatory priorities that misallocated investment and undermined energy resilience.” (05/18/26)

    https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/decades-of-bad-energy-policy-left-oil-markets-vulnerable-to-iran-shock/

  • The Lines We Thought Machines Wouldn’t Cross

    Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
    by George Ford Smith

    “In 2000, the world braced for Y2K. It came with a date and a remedy. There was panic about doomsday but as I and other programmers stretched the year field from two to four characters, apart from scattered hiccups, the lights stayed on. Everything about Y2K was known — the problem, the solution, and the deadline. Q-Day is something else entirely. Q-Day is shorthand for the moment when quantum computing crosses a line we assumed would hold — when the mathematics that secures modern life can be broken, and broken quickly. On Q-Day the locks will be quietly and rapidly picked. And the unsettling part is that the thief may already have your safe, waiting for the day the combination becomes trivial to compute.” (05/18/26)

    https://mises.org/mises-wire/lines-we-thought-machines-wouldnt-cross

  • Last Thing Needed

    Source: Common Sense
    by Paul Jacob

    “‘I think the last thing we need right now is a war that’s 9,500 miles away.’ Just place a period after the word ‘war’ in President Trump’s comments to reporters, after last week’s summit with Chinese ruler Xi Jinping and discussion about China’s democratic neighbor, Taiwan, the Republic of China. Which raises the question: How best to avoid war over Taiwan?” [editor’s note: That one’s easy — the US regime minds its own business. “Problem” solved – TLK] (05/18/26)

    https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/05/18/last-thing-needed

  • The GOP’s Midterm Reversal of Fortune

    Source: Townhall
    by Kirt Schlichter

    “Winston Churchill once observed that there’s nothing quite like the feeling of being shot at and missed. The Republicans are enjoying that glorious sensation as we speak. Thanks to redistricting decisions in various courts as well as some surprising examples of GOP manhood in their wake, it looks like November is a jump ball. The midterms were supposed to be a rendezvous with disaster, and historically, the tides are still against us. But Democrats have just had the miserable experience of discovering that fate is fickle. Recent events have made it so that Republicans have a fighting chance, and our joy and relief that we’re not necessarily destined for doom is amplified by our delight in hearing Democrats squeal in agony as all their dreams die.” [editor’s note: The midterms are nearly six months away. Six months is forever in politics, so take all predictions with a grain of salt – TLK] (05/18/26)

    https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2026/05/18/the-gops-midterm-reversal-of-fortune-n2676169

  • Quantum Vibe, 05/18/26

    Source: Big Head Press
    by Scott Bieser

    Cartoon. (05/18/26)

    https://www.quantumvibe.com/strip?page=2589

  • Boomers vs. Doomers

    Source: Law & Liberty
    by Jeffery Degner

    “Forty years ago, the one-hit wonder, Timbuk 3 harmonized, ‘the future’s so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades.’ In the four decades since, the long-run trends in consumer sentiment cast a decidedly darker outlook. Consumer sentiment measures Americans’ views on their economic future, and it’s been getting consistently more dire over time. When that demoralization becomes ingrained in a generation’s psyche, ‘eat and drink, tomorrow we die’ becomes more than a slogan; it becomes a way of life. One of the institutions most dramatically undermined by this persistent gloom is the family.” (05/18/26)

    https://lawliberty.org/boomers-vs-doomers/

  • Our Own Cognitive Dissonance Is Concealing the Epstein Network

    Source: Libertarian Institute
    by Christine E Black

    “Distract and minimize, confuse and deny, justify and excuse, become angry or enraged, and call crazy those who speak what others do not want to see or hear. In the throes of cognitive dissonance, people resort to all these ploys to relieve their internal discomfort. These horrible events could not possibly be true; the abuse could not possibly have been this widespread, some insist. Governments could not possibly have covered up this sex criminal’s harms, over decades, regardless of which political party was in power while people investigating are connected to those being investigated, as reported by Whitney Webb.” (05/18/26)

    https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/our-own-cognitive-dissonance-is-concealing-the-epstein-network/

  • Palantir Gets an Initial $3.9 Million to Spy on Federal Workers

    Source: The American Prospect
    by Whitney Curry Wimbish

    “The Trump administration is building a surveillance network to spy on its own workforce across multiple agencies. It has already given Palantir an initial $3.9 million to do so at the Department of Agriculture (USDA), federal spending disclosures show. The artificial intelligence war profiteer will ‘design, configure, deploy and manage a secure, user-friendly tool to track USDA employees’ return to the office,’ according to a disclosure. The contract started May 1 and has the potential to grow to $13.3 million over the next fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30.” [editor’s note: I have no problem with it … as long as all data collected are viewable by the public in real time – TLK] (05/18/26)

    https://prospect.org/2026/05/18/palantir-federal-workers-surveillance-usda-social-security-veterans-affairs/

  • Trump Sues the IRS and You and the Constitution

    Source: CounterPunch
    by Kary Love

    “When Trump ran for president of America, and swore his oath, he was telling the world he would preserve and defend ‘due process of law,’ against all enemies foreign and domestic. Due process of law was one critical principle the great American rebels died and bled and fought to establish as a foundation of America itself. Mr. Trump is engaged in a scheme to be ‘judge in his own case’ against the IRS and you (because you pay the IRS, any dollars awarded in the case are your dollars.) Because the IRS and the DOJ ‘representing’ the IRS in the case both work for the President, Mr. Trump ‘decides’ his own case.” (05/18/26)

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/05/18/trump-sues-the-irs-and-you-and-the-constitution/

  • The Man Who Seeks To Rule the World

    Source: Antiwar.com
    by Lawrence Wittner

    “Although Donald Trump has never been modest about his abilities or reluctant to exercise personal power, during his second term in office he has shown clear signs of megalomania.” (05/18/260

    https://original.antiwar.com/lawrence-wittner/2026/05/17/the-man-who-seeks-to-rule-the-world

  • Hucksters Amongst Us

    Source: ProSocial Libertarians
    by Andrew Jason Cohen

    “Many people are writing about why Americans have lost trust in universities. There are, of course, financial reasons, including — at least plausibly — the now higher unemployment rates of recent college grads and the ever-increasing cost of tuition. I leave these to the side. I’ve written about this before but here quickly lay out what I see as a major reason for the loss of trust. Start with the fact that many universities have stopped providing the service they were meant to — and historically did — provide. That service? Providing a system of education that creates well rounded individuals capable of independent critical thinking applicable to anything and which expands the intellectual abilities. Those universities have switched to providing career-specific education. Or what they think is career-specific education.” (05/17/26)

    https://prosociallibertarians.substack.com/p/hucksters-amongst-us

  • Therapy culture is turning politics into a national nervous breakdown

    Source: Fox News
    by Jonathan Alpert

    “As a psychotherapist, I increasingly see people interpreting political disagreement through a framework usually reserved for emotional threat and psychological harm. Opponents are no longer simply viewed as wrong. They’re experienced as toxic, dangerous, unsafe, narcissistic or morally beyond redemption. Once that shift happens, the emotional intensity rises quickly. People stop feeling like fellow citizens with different ideas and start feeling like threats. … Concepts like ‘trauma,’ ‘safety,’ ‘validation,’ ‘triggering’ and ‘boundaries’ can be useful in the right context. But when applied too broadly, they begin subtly transforming disagreement itself into something psychologically destabilizing. That shift has enormous consequences.” (05/17/26)

    https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/therapy-culture-turning-politics-national-nervous-breakdown

  • Mental Illness May be a Myth, but Trauma is a Societal Crisis

    Source: exile in happy valley
    by Nicky Reid

    “As [Thomas] Szasz shows, this conspiracy to domesticate civilization’s neurological malcontents is achieved by declaring our numerous eccentricities to be medical ailments treatable by a variety of forms of therapeutic coercion, from the simple quick fix of pharmaceutical intervention to our involuntary internment at glorified prison camps deemed inpatient facilities. Szasz didn’t reject psychotherapy entirely, however. In fact, he encouraged its widespread use as a means for consenting adults to seek outside guidance in order to ‘learn more about themselves, others and life.’ In other words, Dr. Szasz advocated that therapists behave more like shamans than priests while deriding any notion of mental health being pathologized as a corrupt junk science that deprives the individual of autonomy and basic human dignity.” (05/17/26)

    https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/05/mental-illness-may-be-myth-but-trauma.html

  • So how much does recycling really, really, cost?

    Source: Adam Smith Institute
    by Tim Worstall

    “Recycling some things is sensible, others not so much. Recycling the 4 tonne rare earth magnet in an ocean going windmill makes excellent sense. Pulling the tiny rare earth magnets out of EarPods very much less. The rare earth content of a metal halide bulb is in the milligrammes range — collecting a million lightbulbs to produce a few kg of something worth perhaps $300 is insane. The overall aim is, after all, to preserve resources. Which is entirely fine, obviously, but we must be accurate about what is a resource that must be saved. The human effort which goes into this work is, we insist, one such resource that must be added into the calculation. Collecting a 4 tonne magnet, collecting 1 million lightbulbs. The time people must spend sorting household rubbish for recycling is one of those resources.” (05/17/26)

    https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/so-how-much-does-recycling-really-really-cost

  • Are You Brave Enough for Nonviolence?

    Source: The Reframe
    by AR Moxon

    “People who care, people who don’t. Un-realism and ignore-ance. If you aren’t comfortable now, why were you comfortable before?” (05/17/26)

    https://www.the-reframe.com/are-you-brave-enough-for-nonviolence